Saturday, 7 February 2015

Works on Paper at the Science Museum.

If you like art, and/or history (specifically British WW1 and WW2 history), this post is for you. On Wednesday evening Edd and I headed to the launch drinks of the Works on Paper Art Fair at the Science Museum. Our friends Claire and James (Claire has featured on this blog quite a bit over the years!) have recently started their own fine art dealership, Manning Fine Art, and are displaying some of their pieces at the art fair, so we went along to support them. They specialize in vintage posters, architectural drawings, and artworks of Oxford and Cambridge.

Claire and James

It was great fun to be in the Science Museum after hours, and so wonderful to see so many people milling about Claire and James' area interested in the vintage posters and artworks. I for one adore history, especially WW1 and WW2 history, so was fascinated by the wartime posters they have!

They even have some rare Fougasse posters that even the Imperial War Museum don't have in their archives, as well as an original 1939 Keep Calm and Carry On poster! There aren't many originals left in the world, as they were actually hardly used during wartime, and due to their rarity they fetch a pretty penny....£35,000 for this one! Despite them having such a large selection of pieces at the event, they actually have ten times this in storage! I honestly don't know how they managed to choose out of them all.

We had a wander around the other stalls and also saw Zuleika at the Michael Parkin Fine Art stand, as she recently took over the family art business after her father passed away last year. She had some beautiful contemporary pieces, and it was so funny to see both her and Claire and James right opposite oneanother - what were the chances of friends being placed right opposite each other at an art fair! We bumped into some other friends who were also there supporting the two art dealerships, and had quick catch ups before we headed off. But not before I had one more quick look at this Australia painting! I just love the detailing of it!

If you're not doing anything tomorrow, do go and take a look as it's the last day! You can download a free ticket here. If you can't make it, do take some time to check out Manning Fine Art, they have some really interesting pieces, including some lovely and very reasonably priced Valentine's artworks!

2 comments

I do love some of these pieces, but I'm really not a history person. I can never remember the dates of anything. I'm literally useless with anything History. Although I adore history from way back (I'm talking dinosaurs!)